Monthly Archives: December 2012

You need a practical bookcase, one that can efficiently serve as storage for the mountains of paperbacks that you refuse to throw once you’ve read them. You need to be able to order them alphabetically, for easy retrieval. You need to look at them in neat stacks. After all, you always get your ducks in a row. But you’re looking at this case, and you know you really want it. We want it too, even if the book mosaic within is making us anxious; unlike Lt. James Gordon’s easy decision to cast Batman as a villain, we’re a little torn.

The $283 price tag, however, and the relative emptiness of the bank account is making the point somewhat moot. Maybe not for you though, so hit the link at the bottom to order yours, if you’re so inclined. They’re made to order, and measure 22 x 32 inch / 56 x 82 cm.

Beer. It’s the beverage of kings… and that of drunken frat boys. We drink the stuff for more than just its taste; it’s a bonding thing. Each bottle needs to be opened and how you do it says a lot about you. In order of least to most manly ways of accomplishing this task, you have: with a handheld bottle opener, twisting the cap off with your hand, using the edge of a counter, using your teeth. (please don’t use your teeth) The edge of counter trick is pretty popular, but with it comes damaged counter edges. Some people care, and if that’s you, there’s the BROpener. It’s a simple piece of aluminum that you stick to the side of a counter with a super strong adhesive (provided), and which contains a strong magnet. Use the protruding metal edge to pop the cap, and instead of it falling on the floor, it sticks to the BROpener for easy disposal. It’s simple, it’s cheap ($14 as a pledge on Kickstarter) and available in March if funding is successful.

So this Etsy seller and leatherworker, Julia from Montreal, made an awesome belt for her brother that depicted the last level of Super Mario Bros. It’s intricate, delicately pressed and painted, and just looks great. She didn’t put it for sale on the shop, intending for it to be a present to her brother for his birthday. But then, the other brother in the family posted a picture of it to Reddit, where of course it was a hit. So overwhelming was the demand that Julia decided to make new ones like it available on her shop. You can now own the very same belt, or any other depicting similar levels, either in SMB or other side scroller with reasonable proportions. It’s a long process and each belt is handmade, so of course the price is high. She estimates it to be around $395 per belt, but she’ll have a better idea in the first weeks of January and will adjust her price accordingly then. Still, won’t be cheap, but sure as heck is cool.

If you’re guilty of spamming your friends with random messages and basically useless mail this year, then it might be time to make a new year’s resolution to stop doing that in 2013. But before you do so, it’s time to get your last hurrah–and Facebook is going to make things easy for you with their new Midnight Message Delivery feature.

Of course, the point isn’t to spam them but to send them well wishes for the coming new year. It can get hard to tap or type messages one by one to all of the people you want to greet, so this app is basically the solution. Just pin the Facebook Stories app to your account, create lists of people who you want to message, and then compose your greetings. Facebook will take care of the rest and send them off to be received by January 1st, 2013.

I’d hate to be the recipient of something stuffed into a Prank Pack. You know, those gift boxes that advertise outrageous (but fake) products on the outside while containing something different (but hopefully better) on the inside. This gift right here by Reddit user rad_rob to his girlfriend is sort of like that, minus the prank part because he used an iPad box.

But what’s inside isn’t an iPad–although it’ll probably give his girlfriend the surprise (and shock) of her life. Hit the break to check out what he gave his girl.

For years, burger wrappers have been a necessary evil. They’re great for packing up burgers so you can eat them on the go and not get any mayo on your hands, but they’re not very good for the environment. Did you know that consumers in the US threw away 75 million tons of packaging waste in 2011? That includes burger wrappers among a host of other packaging stuff–but 75 million tons? That’s a lot.

So what would you think if I told you that we could take burger wrappers out of the bin and actually eat them with the burger?

Many believed that 2012 would spell the end of the world as we know it. However, we’re all still here, alive and kicking, with the new year upon us in just a matter of days. I have a lot to be thankful for this year, and I’m sure you do, too. But maybe we should all be most thankful for the fact that we’ve got another year ahead of us to make things right and do what we’ve always wanted to do so we wouldn’t have any regrets when or if the world does finally end.

The New Year is traditionally greeted with a bang, both indoors and outdoors. Firecrackers take care of the latter, while the former is comprised of free-flowing drinks and parties all around with the people who matter the most. What better way to toast to a new year than by drinking controlled amounts of booze in these Syringe Shooters–just like your doctor ordered. They come in a trio of syringes for thrice the fun and triple the merriment.

Bathing in ink doesn’t sound like something most of would normally do. In fact, pouring a bottle of ink into a tub with running water doesn’t sound like something anyone would do.

But if you’re curious at the notion of bathing in ink, then you’ll be pleased to know that you can do exactly just that sans the bottle of ink with these black-and-blue ink bath salts by Japan’s Kaimei & Co.. This company has been producing India ink for calligraphy for more than a century, so they obviously know what they’re doing in the ink department. In the bath department, I’m not very sure.

We’re lucky to live in a society plagued by abundance, as opposed to say, rampant disease or violence. The same can’t be said of every part of the world, of course, but it’s getting to the point where not only are people fat, but their pets are as well. We could obviously embark on a collective diet and exercise regimen, but let’s face it, it won’t happen anytime soon. In the meantime, your pooch still has trouble going up a flight of stairs (as do you, perhaps), so the Stair Of The Dog 2022 was created earlier this year. It’s a chairlift that your dog can use. It features a large button that can easily be pressed with a paw, and can presumably handle pretty large dogs. Currently only a prototype, the machine would cost about $8,000 should it ever come to market.

It was made by UK insurance company More Th>n (that’s not a typo, that’s a “greater than” sign instead of the ‘a’), seemingly as a statement about the rising pet health epidemic. It’s estimated that by 2022, more than 50% of the dogs in the UK will be overweight.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.